4 ms·

Are there any moderately priced 486 SBCs available these days? The ones I've encountered (forgotten the links) were in the $200-or-so range. Surprisingly expens

by marttt 4y ago

Are there any moderately priced 486 SBCs available these days? The ones I've encountered (forgotten the links) were in the $200-or-so range. Surprisingly expensive, or not? I would love to have a dirt cheap fanless 486 minicomputer for FreeDOS (SvarDOS). Not for gaming, mostly for writing and some hobbyist coding. (I'm an ultra-slow thinker, so a single-tasking system is very probably plenty for most things. :) Currently thinking about this one, with Vortex86 -- but it is still, well, fairly expensive as compared to something like a RasPi: https://icop-shop.com/product/ebox-3100/ https://icop-shop.com/product/ebox-3100/ As for fanless and low spec, there is, of course, this wonderful table of thin clients: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml

tomatocracy 4y ago
Alternatively, a Raspberry pi 4 should be powerful enough to run PCem emulating a 486 class system I think.
- marttt 4y ago
  Sure, there are emulators, but I was thinking of a native system. Emulators seem to work great, but I try to avoid several layers of abstractions. Also, feeling nostalgic about how a native FreeDOS system boots in literally 2 seconds (on a modest laptop), I guess. Someone built this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsv-jRiIT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsv-jRiIT8 And this, the weeCee; the price point estimated in the comments is around $600, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA A third one, with lots of diy involved: https://github.com/eivindbohler/tinyllama https://github.com/eivindbohler/tinyllama It is interesting nonetheless that really-low-spec SBCs have not gone into the masses (thus resulting in dirt-cheap prices) the way the RPis have. It is still a nice dream to see this happening with the current rise of retrocomputing.

by marttt 4y ago

tomatocracy 4y ago

Alternatively, a Raspberry pi 4 should be powerful enough to run PCem emulating a 486 class system I think.

marttt 4y ago
Sure, there are emulators, but I was thinking of a native system. Emulators seem to work great, but I try to avoid several layers of abstractions. Also, feeling nostalgic about how a native FreeDOS system boots in literally 2 seconds (on a modest laptop), I guess. Someone built this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsv-jRiIT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBsv-jRiIT8 And this, the weeCee; the price point estimated in the comments is around $600, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USHvvSbYmJA A third one, with lots of diy involved: https://github.com/eivindbohler/tinyllama https://github.com/eivindbohler/tinyllama It is interesting nonetheless that really-low-spec SBCs have not gone into the masses (thus resulting in dirt-cheap prices) the way the RPis have. It is still a nice dream to see this happening with the current rise of retrocomputing.